How-To: Slow Flowers Bouquets

One of the joys of gardening is to step out my back door and clip a few sprigs to bring inside. The day's prettiest blooms and just-unfurled leaves – gathered simply into a bunch and displayed in a jar of water – provide everything I need to start the day. The tiny arrangement graces my kitchen counter or brightens a spot by the keyboard, connecting me with the natural world even when I'm stuck indoors, away from my beloved garden.

Is this floral design? I guess it is, but like many avid gardeners, I certainly never considered myself a florist. When I began a weekly flower arranging ritual, though, I discovered that there is great satisfaction in choosing blooms, foliage and other botanical elements – and then assembling them into a beautiful composition in just the right vase.

As each season unfolded, so, too, did my passion for floral design. My experiment turned into Slow Flowers, a season-by-season, week-by-week book of ideas and inspiration for gardeners and DIY floral designers. My goal was to use only seasonal ingredients from my personal garden or blooms grown by local cut flower farms.

A vase can be a little garden, its contents gathered and arranged to please the eye. So give it a try. Design a bouquet. Channel your inner floral designer and begin your own year with slow flowers.

Step one: Select a vase with relatively straight sides. This green glass vase measures 8-inches tall x 6-1/2-inches wide. Begin with branches. These become the framework to support all the other ingredients. I've used black pussy willow (Salix gracilistyla 'Melanostachys'), arranged so the stems tilt outward and overlap one another at the base

I love old-fashioned metal or glass flower frogs. These floral design accessories offer today's flower-lovers an eco-friendly way to create bouquets - without using florists' foam, which is damaging to the earth and harmful to handle.

These are the freshest, most lovingly-grown summer flowers - straight from Choice Bulb Co., Jan Roozen's farm in Mt. Vernon, Washington. I met Jan at the farmers' market and brought these great ingredients home for a bouquet.